Laura Stevenson and the Cans Sit Resist

dig it

full review

Tracklist:
1. Halloween Pts. 1 & 2
2. Master of Art
3. Caretaker
4. The Healthy One
5. Finish Piece
6. Peachy
7. 8:08
8. Red Clay Roots
9. Barnacles
10. Montauk Monster
11. The Wait
12. The Weight
13. I See Dark

Ranking: #14 for 2011

user rating

4.1
excellent

Chart.

other reviews

Adrian Hertzberg (5)
Not as charming and innocent as it seems....

Maniac (4.5)
#1 contender for most charming album of 2011...

Tom (4.5)
It might not do much that's new or exciting, but Sit Resist proves that music doesn't need to be inv...

xtoxin (4.5)
More than just charming...

Beram C. Lansay (3.5)
This humble offering is perhaps too humble for its own good....

related

A Record

Holy Ghost!

On 337 Lists

5.0
classic

Channing Freeman STAFF

April 29th, 2011 | 1636 replies | 46,329 views

Summary: A definitive piece of Americana that is also a definitive piece of music in general.

I find it curious when a form of media is referred to as "life-affirming," although I can certainly understand why a critic would want to use the phrase (and I can't rule out the possibility that I might have used it once or twice in the past either). I've heard plenty of albums and seen plenty of televisions shows and movies and read enough books to know that those things can indeed make me incredibly happy and fill me with a sense of purpose I rarely feel so strongly, but it never lasts. To me, life-affirming goes hand in hand with life-changing, and I can't say that any piece of music or cinema or literature has truly changed my life. Certain pieces of media have molded or outright changed my tastes, sure, but my life? No matter how large a part media plays in my life, it has never wholly changed it. But when I read a description of Sit Resist that described it as life-affirming (on Laura Stevenson and the Cans's own website, incidentally), I instantly agreed and only then realized that I usually scoff at the term. However, by then it was too late, and so I put the record on and listened again and kept on agreeing.

Sit Resist has not changed my life. The reason I would concede that the album should be described with terms like "life-affirming" is because the way I react to the music hasn't faded over a few dozen listens, and after that many listens I also am still unable to describe the reactions in the first place. I think maybe that's what life-affirming is supposed to mean - that some form of art can make you feel with such intensity that you feel like you're bursting, and you can't slow down long enough to pinpoint particular emotions. You're going in every direction at once, very fast and very far. It's all internal, of course. Circumstances don't actually change. The most music can ever do is act as a sort of painkiller, staving off reality for a little while longer. I think that now, but I haven't always. There are a lot of people for whom music is the be-all and end-all, and they will defend their tastes as vehemently as they would defend their own life. I don't mean to portray people like that in a negative light (I was one of them for a very long time), but I honestly think that people like that are missing something, that they can't truly enjoy the music that they say is their life. Getting your hackles up because someone defamed a band you love isn't passion. Passion for music is being able to shrug at someone and walk away when they defame a band you love, because you're secure in the fact that you love what you love and they love what they love and it's not worth discussing.

Those are all also reasons why I would very rarely describe something as "universal," another word that critics fawn over. Nothing can be loved by everyone. But there are definitely things that comes close (and one of the true joys of media is finding them), and Sit Resist does. It's probably easier to use that descriptor in this case because Sit Resist won't even come close to being heard by everyone, but such is the nature of criticism, and that doesn't mean the word means any less. It's nigh-universal in part because everything is so easy on the ears - Laura Stevenson's voice is quite possibly the most gorgeous in all of indie music, and the music some of the most inventive - but more than that, Sit Resist, on every single listen, seems like a definitive piece of music. There are thematic snatches of just about everything that makes music great - heartbreak, nostalgia, and longing come to mind first. The majority of music has those things in spades, but this album seems apart from others. It's hard to determine whether it's because these themes are presented better in Laura's lyrics or if they shine through more effectively because of the music's inherent beauty. It is quite probably the latter, because the more I think about it, beauty is the major theme here, the one that overlaps and defines all the others: the beauty of heartbreak, the beauty of nostalgia, the beauty of longing.

That's what sets this album apart from its predecessor, A Record. Laura and the band never seemed willing to completely abandon her roots in Bomb the Music Industry!, which resulted in moments like the end of "Mouthbreather" and "Landslide Song/The Dig," both of which were great songs in their own right and fine at the time, but now that we have Sit Resist, I can't help feeling that this is what Laura Stevenson and the Cans were always wanting to be. "Barnacles" keeps the horns that were present in "Landslide Song" but rearranges them in a more traditional manner ("Finally purified or whatever that means," Laura sings), turning down the volume and turning up the synchronization and harmonizing for some truly ingenious musical moments. It helps that they were able to record so many songs, even if half of them are a bit short. A Record sometimes felt like simply a lengthy EP, sort of an extended version of Holy Ghost!, but Sit Resist is fully realized and then some. Everything seems perfectly in place. The deliberate dissonance in the acoustic guitar picking at the beginning of "Montauk Monster" is resolved into beauty in such a simple way, but it seems genius anyway, and the fact that you can hear the band at the end of the song laughing and having fun makes the song even better because you can tell it was written by a group of friends who are having fun first and being inventive second. "Finish Piece" is the most gorgeous indie song written in some time, which is saying something, seeing as how it finds itself on an entire album of gorgeous songs. It sounds like something Antony would write in his most inspired moments, but it's also signature Laura, so much so that any comparison falls short. The same could also be said of "8:08" and closer "I See Dark," with its swellings of feedback that almost seem out of place until the song's second half, which sounds, somehow, more pure because of the noise that preceded it.

The truest showcase of Laura's talent is "Red Clay Roots," the most nostalgic minute and a half of music ever recorded. A few years ago, Horace Engdahl, the head of the award jury for the Nobel Prize, stated his low opinion of American literature and the unlikelihood of an American winning the prize any time soon. He described America as "too isolated" and "too insular," and I would agree, in a way. American literature largely deals with American issues and subjects and cherry-picks topics and characters from other countries when it needs to. But you could use that same description of American insularity and isolation for music and I think someone would be hard-pressed to find that it shows American music in a negative light. Most American art relies on nostalgia, because the American people don't want to be transported to an entirely different place. They want to be transported to a place that's different but not so different that they can't recognize it. American music, in particular, relies largely on the nostalgia of heartbreak (yes, heartbreak is nostalgic). Heartbreak is not a political or economic issue, it's not a buzzword for pundits, it won't be a factor in any upcoming elections, but still that is what the majority of American music deals with. It is here that insularity has been a good thing. Would Laura Stevenson make music like "Red Clay Roots" if she had been born and raised somewhere other than America? Of course not, partly because the song is steeped entirely in Americana, but more importantly, the song, like all great art, is both a mirror and a portal. You see yourself and you see the subject of the art and sometimes they blend together. I think of Horace Engdahl, who is probably not as crotchety and elitist as the above quotes make him sound, and I wonder what he would think of a song like "Red Clay Roots" and a record like Sit Resist. I think of how these songs would look in notation form, and I can see them leaping off the page and flying through the imagination as well as the words on the pages of any novel, American or otherwise. I can see them changing lives.

Share: Facebook Stumble Digg Twitter Del.icio.us

Recent reviews by this author

Lana Del Rey Born to Die

Say Anything Anarchy, My Dear

Courtships The Feral Sound

La Dispute Wildlife

Metallica Ride The Lightning

Various Artists (Indie) Come As You Are

FAQ // STAFF & CONTRIBUTORS // SITE FORUM // CONTACT US

Bands: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Site Copyright 2005-2012 Sputnikmusic.com
All Reviews Displayed With Permission of Authors | Privacy Policy